Some manufacturing facilities such as factories comprise a warehouse. The warehouse is typically used for storing products that have been manufactured before they have been sold to customers. For example in factories that either manufacture or process further paper in roll form, including cutting a paper roll into smaller rolls, a warehouse is used for storing paper rolls that are left over when a paper roll is cut into the ordered width. Indeed, typically the raw material is in the form of a paper roll of standard width and thus it is not always possible to cut the original roll into smaller rolls of only exactly the required width. The left over roll or rolls are then stored for future use, i.e. an order where such width is needed. For the time being, such left over rolls are stored on pallets or the like and the pallets, which usually comprise several types of rolls, are stored in the warehouse. Retrieving the rolls from the warehouse requires retrieving the pallet on which the rolls are stored and then manually handling the concerned roll or rolls in order to include them into the order. This is labour extensive and thus expensive. Moreover, manual handling of especially paper rolls increases the risk of damage to the rolls, which in turn increases the total cost as such a damaged roll would have to be disregarded.
When storing different kind of the tyres in a warehouse, there are similar kinds of problems. Typically, the tyres are stored on pallets or the like, one pallet comprises a number of tyres, typically one pallet comprises only one kind of the tyres. Picking the desired tyres for the order from the warehouse requires retrieving the pallet or several pallets on which the tyres are stored and manually or with separate robot picking the desired tyres and then returning the pallet(s) with remaining tyres back to the warehouse. Transporting of the pallet(s) to and from the warehouse is understandably very laborious and time-consuming, and the shorthanded pallets returned back to the storage decrease the volumetric efficiency of the storage. Similar problems may occur in any other kind of factories and warehouses, especially those where the manufacturing process inevitably leads to products that are not according to the specific order.